Product Design Engineer Amos Gaynes Holds Moog One Reddit AMA

Another day, another scoop from Moog on their flagship Moog One Polysynth. If the hype is anything to go off, this unit will probably go down in the history books. Moog product design engineer, Amos Gaynes kindly held a Moog One Reddit AMA session yesterday to answer a few questions.

Photo: Alex Kacha

Moog Product Design Engineer Amos Gaynes held a revealing Moog One Reddit AMA yesterday to unveil a bit of the Moog mystery.

The questions ranged from technical specifications on the new model to the future of Moogs plans. Here’s some interesting snippets from the conversation.

One user asked: “Moog have done a fair few reissues over the past few years, so what was the deciding factor in taking the risk with a brand new design and not doing a reissue of the Memorymoog?

For the record, I’m much happier seeing the company explore new work rather than rely on nostalgia.”

Amos replied: “We figured that if we were going to pour this much effort into an instrument, that it should make a strong statement about the current Moog Music and provide a springboard into our future.”

One user enquired about the Moog’s partnership with Eventide in relation to the onboard reverb package:

“Reading the article on CDM about the One and this answer popped up in regards to the Eventide reverbs on board:

‘Moog One was developed to explore what is possible in a polyphonic synthesizer, and Eventide’s breath taking reverb technology was the right fit. The Room, Hall, Plate, Blackhole, and Shimmer reverbs are all implemented using Eventide’s world-class algorithms with a few optimizations for use in Moog One.’

I’m just curious how the relationship with Eventide came about and sort of “optimizations” were made to implement those algorithms in the One?”

Atmos replied: “Moog and Eventide have a longstanding mutual respect, and many of the engineers on both sides are friends. When it came time to put best-in-class effects in this best-in-class synthesizer, it was a natural fit. The Eventide algorithms are identical and have just been tuned to run on the One hardware.

There are multiple effects slots — each timbre gets its own dedicated effect, and in addition, there are one or two master bus effects with independent send level from each timbre… You get two master effects if sending to them in mono (mono in, stereo out), or one master effect with stereo sends (stereo in, stereo out)”

One user asked about the Moog One’s relationship with the Internet of Things:

“From the new product site:

Moog One features a rear-panel Ethernet port that enables the synthesizer to connect directly to its source and “Phone Home” to the Moog Factory in Asheville, NC, allowing Moog technicians to perform remote diagnostics and service routines should they ever be needed.

It’s totally fascinating that the Moog One is part of the Internet of Things. Is this the first time Moog has included internet connectivity in a hardware instrument? How does that feature change how you think about the stability, reliability and security of the instrument?

Atmos replied: “Actually we’re planning on using it for bitcoin mining… (j/k)

On a more serious note, we have a talented team of developers who take stability and security quite seriously, and we are committed to making sure that the Moog One plays nicely in this new world.”

Moog has also announced they will be live streaming the production of their Moog One straight from their Asheville North Carolina. They also released an in-depth introductory film, titled ‘Moog One – A Meditation On Listening,’ demonstrating the capabilities of the new synth.